Love in the Time of Intolerance Part III

Love in the Time of Intolerance:  Everything is Meaningless

I’m a MEANINGFULNESS junkie. The most important book I’ve ever read is “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl.  His famous quote, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."  is my e-mail signature.  The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s book, “Toward a Meaningful Life” was one of the main reasons I stayed in the Chabad cult for as long as I did.   Everything HAS to have meaning or I disengage, or worse, don’t connect at all. 

My line each time I return from Israel to LA is I’m going from meaningful to meaningless.  Although I’m born and raised here, in fact, I’m a second generation Angeleno, I’ve never felt this is HOME – I’ve been longing for where that connection, that feeling I belong, in the most ancient of ways.   The place I can go deep because I AM deep.  I’m not sure why or what the cause is for my lack of respect for LALA LAND, but I suspect it has to do with the transitory nature of the City.  The old joke that if you’ve just arrived but written a screenplay or gone on an audition while waiting tables, you qualify as a LA Native.  I connect much more where there is a strong sense of the history that I carry in my genes, or perhaps in my past lives where walking the cobblestone streets of Boston, or Paris, and that indescribable feeling of my DNA settling the first time I set foot on the ground in Nairobi, on the Terra Firma of the Mother Continent.  And of course, most powerfully in Israel, where EVERYTHING MEANS SOMETHING, and nothing just exists.  At least that’s the marketing campaign.

But maybe I’m wrong about LA.  Meaning is, after all, subjective.  So, why don’t I ascribe meaning to living in Los Angeles?  Surprisingly, I just realized this is the first time I am even asking myself this question, and the answer is I honestly don’t know.  My line to myself when I am out of sorts, which is a good deal of the time, is that “I can’t find a place for myself.”  These days it’s even harder for me to curl up with a book, no matter the comfy reading nooks I have in my home.  But is this because living in LA has no meaning and if I were somewhere else, I would naturally just be able to “just be”?  Carefree yet grounded and solid with meaningfulness oozing from my every pore?

Hell if I know.  It is true that I suck at small talk.  Girl talk bores the shit out of me.  Gossip irritates me.  I can’t “just hang.”  It’s why, I tell myself, I hate dating.  Hiding behind demanding meaningfulness has allowed me to judge and assume and not “get out there”.  To stay safe and not risk.  Oy. 

For some reason, these lyrics from “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel just ran through my mind:

“In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains….”

I’ve not been valuing down time. I’ve not been valuing laughter.  I’ve not allowed myself fun.  I don’t live in the moment.  I’m dragged down by my skewed addiction to “meaningful”.

Epiphany number one literally just now:  I’ve been conflating meaningless with self-care.  A good friend has been in more war zones and battlefields and hellholes than most civilians.  As the Executive Director for Doctors Without Borders in LA, and now a leader in global prison reform she’s a frequent flyer into Hell:  famines, genocides, war zones, rape camps, all of it.  She’s selfless and driven and brilliant.  Her answer when I asked her how she deals with what she sees and does:  Mid-century Scandinavian furniture – after all, she’s Swedish.  She scours thrift shops, old furniture stores, and loves finding that odd end table or something to place next to her reading nook.  It keeps her sane.

I have not allowed myself to have a meaningless pressure valve.  I need one now more than ever. The truth is I’ve never valued myself enough to cherish meaninglessness.  Epiphany number two: unless I ascribed meaning to everything than I did not have meaning.  My self-worth is strangle-strength bound to the meaning I give to everything outside me.

Of course, my subconscious, or Higher Self has been leading me to this realization all along.  It’s no accident that my favorite writer is Milan Kundera and two of my favorite novels of his are “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “Immortality” and of all the Hasidic Masters distilling ancient Jewish wisdom, my heart and soul are soothed by the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, who’s  central message is to never lose hope and to find joy and cause for happiness in everything that happens to you.  

Epiphany number three:  I have to believe I am worthy of moments of joy, of beauty, of awe and of love.  It’s crucial for me to consciously curate those moments:  those stand-alone experiences that are not tied to anything “larger”, have no baggage or agenda or weight of the world attached.

Epiphany number four:  Everything is meaningful.  Even the things that are not.  

I Rest in the Grace of the World

I Rest in the Grace of the World

The Peace of Wild Things

Snuggle Leica-la

Savor a perfect cappuccino

Listen to music I love

Curl up in bed and read

Drive listening to great music

Sit on the ground

Yoga

Meditate

Pray

Bird watch

People watch

It’s probably telling the part of my bat mitzvah at age thirty-six that got the most tears from me and knowing laughter from the audience was the last stanza of the Kohenim blessing: “….and may G-d grant you peace.” Pretty much everyone there knew me too well, including the wonderful Rabbi, who said this with so much oomph I think he believed he could conjure up the Messiah as well, with about the same odds. 

I’m….intense, which is a polite way of saying that Inner Peace is not my default setting.  Or, as the sweating, drained masseuse told my  then girlfriend after two hours of struggling just to untangle my shoulders,  “Yael has an adversarial relationship with the Universe.”

Most days that’s an understatement, but some days it’s not.  The word “PEACE” in any language grabs me by the heart.  Probably by the throat too.  I talk a lot about it.  I chase it.  I try to cultivate it.  And, more often than not, I fail.  Craving inner peace is my default setting.  I am dying to trust with a capital T, to have unshakeable faith with a capital F, and to finally let go of my hyper-alert and control freak nature is my dream.  Spending the rest of my life in this hell of believing everything is up to me is my nightmare, and one I live daily.

I have had indications my soul is far more chilled, after all, this lifetime is not its first thrill ride.  I have had enough past life visions to wonder if Mel Brooks’ 2,000 year-old Man was my drinking buddy.

It’s not that I don’t have tangible proof of how amazing things are when I get out of my own way.  I am a fucking Rockstar at manifesting (see prayer notes in Kotel wall if you don’t believe me). I’ve had incredible glimpses of what it feels like to LET GO and LET G-d, and it’s nothing short of bliss.  It’s these moments, however fleeting, that keep me trying. 

There’s a line in the script of one of my favorite films, “Under Fire”, when, describing the female lead, the screenwriter uses the phrase “with a tough grace” to illustrate how the character faces the world.

I love this description, and wish it applied to me.  In my best moments I think it does.  Someone once asked me what the phrase means and why I admire it so.   Because I think it means you allow for most things to be out of your control, but you don’t lose sight of your part in the grand scheme of things.  You see the beauty, the joy, the sadness, the pain, the fear and the love and through it all, you are detached enough to not try to control everything, but you commit fully to what is up to you. But is that the ability to rest in the grace of the world??

The character in “Under Fire” was a war journalist.  I’m a recovering photojournalist with some war and genocide experience. That’s a lie, though, to say we can leave those worlds we’ve parachuted into behind.  We don’t ever recover.  We try to process what we’ve seen and done and witnessed into a narrative, a memory box, that does not destroy our psyche or our lives months, years or decades later.  But inner peace? 

So how does one who’s been on “Man’s Inhumanity to Man” World Tour rest in the grace of the world when you’ve borne witness to so much the opposite?  By relentlessly searching to also bear witness to those grace-filled moments and even to hoard them.   Just as I am trained to unflinchingly see our most horrific moments, I’ve consciously had to train myself to see the even more powerful moments of grace, and let me tell you, that’s much harder. I flinch.  We don’t give as much value to moments of beauty, of joy, of awe, of love. I know this in my bones and my bones ache for our inability to value moments that save us.

Years ago, on my 43^rd birthday, alone and kind of feeling sorry for myself, I stopped by the CVS to pick up some things. It was Prom Season.  Just then, four couples on their way to their high school prom swept in, the girls grown up and stunning in their beautiful formals, the boys scrubbed and shining in their tuxes.  They were full of the future, of possibility – their feet barely touching the ground.  As I watched them make their way across the store, they passed an older woman in a wheelchair who’d obviously had a stroke.  Her face was literally frozen permanently into an expression of surprise.  Her eyes wide, mouth open.   Slouching beside her was her husband, leaning in exhaustion on the cosmetic counter.  The young couples glided past them, and as they did, her eyes locked on them, and I could see she was wishing for each of their young lives to be blessed with only moments of grace.  She saw I noticed her, and so I blew her a kiss.  And with every incredible effort, she blew me one back.

Love in the Time of Intolerance Part II

This is what life does.  I’m standing at the Kotel, finally staring down my internalized homophobia, coming out to G-d and putting a prayer in the wall “Paging Miss Israel.”  A plea to meet my bashert, the woman of my dreams who would, for all intents and purposes, complete me.

This is what life does. Armed with my new bravado, I brave the few “lesbian bars” in Tel Aviv.  The first one was Yelped as a café, so I kill time and order dinner…and wait….and wait….as more and more straight families come in.  Finally, I call the waitress over and ask, discretely, if I am in the right place.  “Oh”….she says, with a knowing smile.  “We’re a family café now. Try this other place”, and she writes it down.  I hail a cabbie who silently drives me down a dark street, points down the ally (this is SO cliché….) and says….”Em…..you know, it’s a….. different club.”  “Thank you,” I say.  “I’m different.”  “He gives me a funny look I interpret as “Funny, you don’t look Lesbian” and drives off.

This is what life does. Inside, it has the same dark, sad vibe as the depressing lesbian bars in LA.  A few young women laughing together eye me suspiciously.  I try to get the bartender’s attention – what’s the international sign for being ignored?  Finally I order a gin and tonic.  A woman who’s been drinking alone and definitely not my type slides over with her drink and I notice an odor:  the national drink of Israel:  Red Bull and vodka.  She asks me what I’m drinking and if she can smell it.  I give her my drink and leave. 

This is what life does. Back at my hotel, the gorgeous woman working the night shift asks how my night was.  Feeling awkward, I tell her a little bit about it.  She wishes me goodnight.  A few minutes later, she friends me on Facebook letting me know she’s gay, but just getting over her latest relationship and not available.  Oy.  I’d not even asked.

This is what life does. A few months later, back in LA, I get an email invitation from a Hadassah acquaintance to go to a political event in LA on women’s rights in Israel.  Since I used to work for the Israeli Consulate LA,  I don’t pay much attention as to the details and put it on my calendar. 

This is what life does. Miss Israel of 1980 is now a women’s rights activist.  Not just Miss Israel, but just elected Miss Israel of All Time.  Literally.  Her title is Queen of Queens.  Supermodel gorgeous woman with a dazzling smile and an inner light that takes your breath away.  The light comes from her Neshama.   At the end of the event I introduce myself, and I’d be happy to help her cause.

This is what life does.  A couple weeks later, I get an email from her forwarded to me by the wife of the current Israeli Consul General asking if we can all meet for breakfast soon to discuss working together.  We meet and plan.  We do events in Southern California and get to know each other.  She’s wrestling with filing for divorce when her two kids finish high school soon and go off to college.  Slowly we share details about our lives.  Past loves and relationships.  What I don’t share is my current truth.  How much desperation, depression and despair I’m in.  How the stress of being the sole caregiver of my parents and on guard against an older sister who only wants her inheritance combined with the soul crushing agony of knowing I am not doing what I am meant to do in this life is killing me.

This is what life does.  She goes to Israel for the summer to do events and invites me to join her to continue our work.  I know when G-d is handing me a lifeline and I grab it.

This is what life does.  Two weeks before I am to leave, my Dad has to have emergency surgery to put in another dialysis access point, with slim odds.  I find the strength to tell my Mom that no matter what happens with Dad, I’m going to Israel.  They have caregivers helping now. Thankfully his surgery is a success.

This is what life does.  Two days before I’m to fly to Israel, my internist notices a funky ultrasound around my heart.  Water in my pericardium.  He sends me to a cardiologist.

This is what life does.  The cardiologist is an Orthodox Jew who is not going to stop me from flying to the Holy Land.  The water is barely a thimble full and his guess is it’s most likely from an old bacterial infection.  I know what it’s from.  It’s the tears I have not shed from the life I have not allowed myself to lead.  

This is what life does.  My Hebrew birthday begins the next evening and the day before Erev Shavous: the birth of the Jewish people standing before G-d at Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah. It’s the holiday that celebrates showing up.  I arrive in Israel just hours before sunset.  She picks me up and I put my feet in the waters of the Mediterranean just as the sun sets and I tell her what happened and we toast my health and my birthday. 

This is what life does.  A decade after my prayer in the Wall, she is absolutely my bashert – but not in the way I’d prayed for.  She’s my soul mate best friend, and in many ways, the guardian of my Neshama. With her and her kids, I finally have a family that loves and cares and nurtures me and I them.  My heart is healed, as is my soul.

This is what life does.  “You can’t always get what you want …you get what you need”.  Or, as she reminds me when things seemingly go awry, G-d has other plans.

Love in the Time of Intolerance Part I

Love in the Time of Intolerance Part 1

“We took you on, lock, stock and barrel.”  To this family to whom I had traveled ten thousand miles from Los Angeles to Cape Town to meet, clearly, I was something to take on, a burden.  I was unworthy of their love and acceptance, and by extension, since they were my conduit for finding my way back to my religion, to Judaism, I was, even more devastatingly, unworthy of G-d’s love and acceptance.  I was a bad Jew.  Their statement was a damning sentence that would ring in my ears for close to a decade.

That judgement, that intolerance for ME, for who I was, lodged and festered in my already damaged psyche.  I’d already been infected by my family, by society, by stories.  San Francisco family trip, tomboy me just out of 4^th grade, touring Height Ashbury during the Sixties….A woman in jeans passes us.  Mom says to me, “you see that?  If you don’t stop playing with (cowboy) guns, that’s what you’re going to be.”  “What’s that?” I asked.  “A fate worse than death.” Mom answers.  I instinctively knew what she meant.

So…..I dated boys and fell in love all the while clamoring for an escape from who I was and at the same time, subconsciously, powerfully, insatiably drawn to discover what it meant to be a Jew. The idea of Tikkun Olam- repairing the world, runs SO DEEP in my DNA that I cannot see life as worth living unless I am bringing light unto the darkness.

 That longing for that Jewish connection and running away from being a lesbian is why I married Joey at twenty.  My parents were convinced it was to get out of the house. Fucking understatement but what drew me in even more was Joey’s widowed Dad and family were Jewish with a capital J.  Holocaust survival, escaping from a labor camp in Siberia to Palestine, building the newly declared State of Israel, emigrating to the US in search of a better life.  They were living the history I’d passionately studied.  I loved the holiday dinners. The food. The stories. English, Hebrew, Yiddish and a mix of Russian and Polish and German. The ritual of the Seder.  They called me the Shabbos Shiksa, my Reformed upbringing subject of scorn.  When the hypocrisy got to be too much – theirs’ and mine, Joey and I divorced.  He went on to marry his real Shiksa secretary and I came out of the closet.

My Yiddishkeit soul has been searching for my Neshama’s home here on earth.  Born in a Jewish into a mostly atheist family - Swerdlow’s after all, are infamous in Soviet circles) and an observant and terrified-of-G-d Grandmother on my Mom’s side, I was constantly searching for my own connection.  Getting confirmed at Wilshire Blvd Temple by the Father, Son and Holy Ghost Rabbis didn’t cut it.  They tried to amp up their attendance with electives so I learned photography which became my profession but that’s about it.

Just after getting divorced, I got Bat-mitzvah’ed at thirty-six at Beth Chayim Chadashim, one of the two LGBTQ synagogues in LA.  My Parsha was Bamidbar.  Building your tabernacle in the desert, and since I’d been wandering in the spiritual desert my entire life, I gave a great speech about finally finding myself.  I lied.  I was still lost. Coming out of the closet was only liberating this lifetime, and I was on a desperate search for the immortal.

A couple years later, I fell in love with the Shiksa Goddess down the street.  We were best friends and after one thing lead to another, I got my heart handed to me in a million pieces.  

Which brings me to the afore mentioned Chabad family I thought would welcome me with open arms.  A bit of backstory:

With my heart shattered in a million pieces by Lisa, after a particularly awful meltdown, I demanded of G-d the following: “Bring me, right now, my spiritual mentor, partner, and companion for I know what I’m meant to do in this life, but I’m lost as to the Path, and don’t mess around.”

The next day, I have an email in my Swerdlow@aol.com box.  From Nicole Green in Cape Town, South Africa.  An errant email meant for Miriam Swerdlov, the only living relative of the Rebbe, with one missed letter on the keyboard, and instead, the Chabad Shilach answers my prayer. This starts an almost daily (not on Shabbat) email conversation, meeting her LA mishpocha, and finally flying to Cape Town six months later.  Make no mistake, I’d come out in the second email.  Expecting to receive a “you’ll fry in hell” instead she asked if I have a proper mezuzah on my door.   I was floored.  Could this be the acceptance I’d longed for?

Not so much.  In between massive amounts of coffee, scotch and cigarettes they did their best to convince me I’m not really gay, that it’s the result of abuse, that I can marry some loser bachelor in the community for appearances (who the hell would I be fooling??), and all sorts of other conversion therapy attempts.  Their pressure worked…for around seven years.  I call it doing time with Chabad.

In 2009 I finally went to Israel.  In Jerusalem over Shabbat, my internalized homophobia reached its peak.  The next day, I went to the Kotel and put my scrawled prayer in the wall, begging to be relieved of this self-hate, this intolerance for my own being, for self-acceptance.

I also put a prayer in the wall “Paging Miss Israel….” And she showed up….but that’s another story.